How did you get interested in RTW and then in EB?

[Bucefalo]

I had a CD which came with a video game magazine, which had the demo of RTW. It was the battle of Cannae and it was bloody awesome! I fell in love inmediatly

I got interested in EB when i saw it announced in total war center, and saw for the first time those awe-shocking models and textures, all incredibly historical and much nicer than the vanilla ones.

[Starforge]

Been playing computer games for 30+ years. Bought RTW at release and thoroughly enjoyed it. I found EB through discussions on the forums over at RTR.

[chenkai11]

I love WAR! Especially ancient ones ever since I was a child. I read books of chinese ancient war, drawing pictures, and watching war movies. I am an addict of PC games, and I always dreamt of games can represent ancient wars. When I got MTW1, my dream came true (well... half of it, because I want more realistic and complicated one).

So I bought RTW when I saw it.

I played RTR first, then RS, then EB and got stuck.

[Dewirix]

I only bought Rome in 2007 after picking it up second hand in a two-for-£10 deal. At the time I think it was the other game I wanted more, but since Rome was effectively free I thought I'd get.

Before that, I had played a bit of Shogun (and still own a copy), but found it too hard. My strategy gaming background is much more turn-based, so I was sceptical of my ability to control 20 units in real time.

Having started playing Rome (as the Julii) I realised that it wasn't as hard as remembered (I had no idea at this point how overpowered the Roman factions were in vanilla). I played that first Julii campaign through to completion, but then had a look to see if there were any decent mods around as I had heard that this was a strength of the TW games.

That led me to EB, which was then at the 0.8-something stage. I downloaded it and picked the Casse for my first campaign as I thought it would be fun to fight in Britain. In retrospect this might not have been the best of ideas as I'm not sure their roster was complete at that stage and I think I failed to grasp the reform concept properly (plus it might have still been date-based at that time).

Suffice to say I spent a long time conquering first Britain, then Gaul and then Iberia using little more than basic spearmen and FMs.

I stopped playing for a bit after that figuring I'd come back when the mod was finished. When I found out that 1.0 had been released I got it and thought I'd give someone else a try. Got engrossed in a Romani campaign, worked out how good phalanxes were and so switched to Baktria and have been trying out all the other factions since.

In all I must have logged solid weeks of EB, but only a few days worth of vanilla. I tried playing it again a few months ago and found that it's still fun, but insubstantial.

I've also found it quite hard to take seriously any TW game or mod that starts me off with a positive income.

Didn't mean to write quite so much for this, but thought it was appropriate given the immense amount of enjoyment this mod has given me. I'm already planning my next moves in my embryonic Epeiros campaign.

[madbriton]

I first saw a review of RTW in a newspaper, and wanted it immediately. Unfortunately my computer wasn't good enough to run it so I had to wait several months. Got it and couldn't stop playing, until I got fed up with historical flaws and too easy to blitz etc.

I only got into EB last year. I hadn't really played much modded stuff before. I looked for a mod that was a new experience, along with historical accuracy. Need I say more.

[Weebeast]

Out of all 20 something grand children, I'm my grandfather's favorite grandson. Well at least I like to think that. I spent my childhood a lot with him than my own dad. I saw him play chess with his best friend a lot and we used to watch Ben hur over and over. I know Ben Hur doesn't represent "Rome" much but that kind of movies got me interested in ancient world etc. Chess got me into strategy/tactical games. Chess + Ben Hur = RTW.

As for EB, as a general rule of thumb, I've always reminded myself to try out mods that people put a lot of time into. Of the "vanilla-based" total conversion mods, EB has no competition at least as far as I know - I'm a really long time MTW player who just got RTW cus I'm sick of MTW and only post at org. So I downloaded this first.

[option]

I was taking a Greek and Roman History course earlier this year, and it rekindled my love of ancient history (I remember reading books about Rome and the Assyrians and others when I was a kid, but nothing since then). I remembered playing a demo of Medieval: Total War all the way back in 2003 and loving it, but being unable to run it at the time due to my lacking computer. Now having a better one, I went out and picked up RTW and played it extensively. Came onto the org forum a few times to ask some questions and noticed that RTR and EB were getting a lot of praise, so I checked them out. Ended up downloading EB first and firing up an Epeiros campaign, and I fell in love. The learning curve is very steep initially (I was used to cruising with VH/VH on vanilla, so I was surprised when I got crushed in my first Epeirote campaign), but I picked it up quickly enough. Have taken several factions to the verge of victory and am currently closing in on my first campaign completion, courtesy of the Arche Seleukia.

[Mikhail Mengsk]

I love this period, and when i found RTW i immediately bought it. I enjoyed the vanilla version for a while, but i almost immediately switched to RTR and after a few campaigns i'd like to change and downloaded EB. ^^

[Head Casse]

To be concise:

Missed Shogun, fell in love with M:TW, found mods, pre-ordered R:TW which was a bag of rusty spanners, found RTR, heard about EB, took the plunge with EB 0.7, never looked back.

No doubt in my mind - Best Mod Ever (and all of my games are modded).

[delablake]

Well I fell...for Shogun, got hooked, and have continued to travel down the TW Highway until TWMII -which was a total strat map graphic + game mechanics disaster for me, and I didin't like the Steam-stuff in E:TW (slowed down my game an awful lot) either. A real pity, for I'm tempted by the Napoleonic Add-On.. :(((

when I first realized that there somthing called "modding" I made a quick research on the internet and...found EB, 0.81 at that time

and I believe it's the only really long-term playable RTW mod
I've tried out quite ALL the other ones, literally, and still EB is the best for me.
EB II will be like a sofa strategist's wet dream come true...
EB team go!

[godsakes]

i first got into the total war series with a budget copy of shogun total war, took me by complete surprise how good it was and ever since i've followed the series up to MTW2

i first came across the realism mods by reading an article in PCgamer for 'rome total realism' got hooked on that - couldn't go back to a non-modded total war game so i eventually started looking for an even better mod hence EB

[Whatever Scortamareva]

Bought RTW a while back with an HMV discount card () and loved it. Then, a few months ago, I got an urge to play it again, but couldn't install it (!) because I lost the original disc. Anyway, I finally managed it, found the twcenter forums, found XGM, then found EB.

To people reading this, yeah, you were right, that wasn't interesting at all.

[moonburn]

been a gamer for 2 long now and somewhere along the line i got my hands on mtw

so after trying out mtw rome was a must have but i must admit it was 2 much of broken expectations when it came down to the real game so it fell out of flavour pretty fast

then one day i started reading in forums cause i was displeased and felt i had to show my anger for the total lack of brains required to play the game wich for me was a downgrading compared to mtw
altough i kept playing and researching forums for tips and aar´s

one day when i was looking for new aar´s (one can learn alot from reading them ) i found these forums and after reading quite alot of those aar´s (kudos to cirurgheon and olafblackeyes) i decided to give it a go (1.1 had just been released) and bought a new laptop and a new rtw cd/dvd and started playing

all i can say about eb (and as i said i played them all blizzard age of empires pharo civilization and so on ) is that is the best game i have ever played yet (despite the stupid ai and diplomacy)

[AqD]

I got started with RTW when I saw this video on youtube. It just looks so darn Epic! The only bad thing is that the Romans won. However, fellow Romaioktonoi, please do not spam on this thread or it will get locked. After I started playing RTW, I got more interested in ancient history, and then began to hate RTW for being innacurate. One day I was looking up on cataphracts when I saw a picture of an EB cataphract wielding a 2 handed lance. When I looked into EB more, I realized it was a history buff's dream come true.

RTW: I saw RTW in heavengames and it seems interesting.... until I played it of course. I then dumped vanilla and found RTR...

EB: found it in twcenter. Amazing though unplayable until v1.2, when I'm already making a mod of my own to re-create some of EB stuff in RTR. Now it's just my historical reference!

[gamegeek2]

Playing battles on paper with a friend who introduced me to the totalwar series. I remember the day I found out about EB, reading on RTW on Wikipedia, I decided to click on the "Europa Barbarorum" link in the mods section first because it had a really cool name and I really wanted accurate barbarian factions (yeah the name gets ya) - I certainly got more than I expected.

[Mister V]

Been playing different mods since the release of RTW back in 2004. Mainly vanilla > RTR > EB. I'd count all the hours I've given to this game, but the result will probably shock me, so it's better if I don't. The replay value is just unbeatable... even now I want to play it again, even if I know just about everything in there, and battles aren't very fun to play.

[Olaf The Great]

I was big on Civ3 way way back in the day, and at some point I got one of those 10 buck compilation CD's with Stronghold and Tropico I liked Stronghold so much I craved an even richer Medieval experience, and got Medieval.
I fell in love with it's battle system and Rome was the obvious step up.


I have always been a stickler for historical accuracy, so I was drawn to RTR, and then with the constant EB vs RTR threads way back I decided to try it out and apparently made the first EB AAR ever, even if the Wastelands AAR was 9001x better than mine.

[Stycks]

always wanted to feel in control of a real army!
RTW gave me that chance! its like one of the few games i can actually fight a battle the way a real life battle would go! none of the rushing cheap units to their deaths in rise of nations or age of empires! these wanted to live! and the first time i saw a unit rout (it was one of mine) i almost sacrificed my pet rock thanking the video game gods that finally those dudes on my screen had lives to care about!

but....

after a while it got boring cuz my little play troops would die or kill like they were using light sabres

so...

i looked up for mods to make it better....

found RTR (no flaming, but i think it was all eye candy)
found surrectum (idk why i didnt like it, i think it was too roman centric)

then found EB....
LOVED IT!
MY SOLDIERS ACT LIKE REAL SOLDIERS FOR ONCE!

[Arkhis]

I got into Total War thanks to Medieval: Total War. It still is, by far, my most favoured TW Vanilla game. I follewed with Rome, ofcourse, and I like it in the beginning, but then it lost its appeal.

Then, I discovered EB, and I've been playing it ever since! I have no idea how I found out about it though

[Vulg]

First MTW but have always loved Roman history and Roman army games, remember playing Age of Empires and wishing I could have more troops and a world to play with.

Then came RTW, loved it but got annoyed with flaming pigs and just being able to play Rome but as three factions, when really I wanted to just be rome and have more of a struggle to take the world (Head hurlers and screaming ladies, turned me away).

I went to RTR then onto SPQR then back to RTR, I liked the change but wanted more depth and scope. Found EB and have really enjoyed it, just think the game would have been better being more in depth as EB is than as a light mockery of history as RTW off the shelf is.

[Subotan]

Found RTW when i saw it on the TV program Time Commanders.

*Raises hand*

I then found EB when I was browsing the Wikipedia article on RTW when I was meant to be doing work in school. And I've loved it ever since.

[Ca Putt]

I have good friend who played Rome total war a lot and constantly spammed me with things like: "then I trained a fullstack of pretorians and conquered 5 cities in a row...." the high focus on Rome rather put me of tho, as I really don't like them. some time later he started with M2TW which was more up my sleeve as I was an ole AoK veteran. I played the Campaign and I kind of liked the gameplay.
Later I started modding and started working on an Ancient mod which Increaced my intrest in ancient society and warfare and lead me into serious Internet reserches during which I found the EB website. I was amazed by the detail of information and love for the game and was very glad EB focused on more than just rome thus I bought RTW gold edition for 10 bucks and had a lot of fun since :)

[Mallios]

I remember the first TW game I ever played was Shogun:Total War when I was about 8. I am always quite suprised when I hear people saying that S:TW had a better AI than RTW, because I always found it pretty easy. I had one established tactic that I remember always working, which I repeated every time I played the game (I picked the faction on the southern tip of Japan, allied with my neighbour, then flanked them by island hopping, destroyed them and them porceeded to obliterate everyone else).

To this day, I have only actually played one campaign on RTW (whcih didn't go so well), instead I only just watched my brother playing ( mostly cause he never let me play), although I played a lot of custom battles ( war pigs vs peasants anyone?). I found EB while looking at the wikipedia article on R:TW, played a small Romani campaign with the money cheat on as a sort of tutorial and then went on to play a Casse, Baktria and then KH campaign.

[Blxz]

Fired up MTW one day, years after it was made and liked it enough to go out and buy as rome and shogun on an impulse buy.

For EB I stumbled on it about 3 times in different sites around the web back in the 0.8x days and finally after seeing it so much decided to download. (screw damn 56k modems) Played that for a long long time until I read a guide somewhere about Baktria starting with more than 1 town. This made me excited so I searched it out again and came into EB1.1. Only to discover they are back to 1 town again =( Damn old guides. Fell in love with this nice newer polished version.

[Marcus Ulpius]

I liked strategy gaming and history, especially the classical period (at one point I even considered a career as a historian). RTW seemed the perfect game for me, but after a while I got tired of it. Several years later when I wanted a strategy game based on classical antiquity and found none, I've returned to RTW, but it seemed cheap and shallow, so I started looking for mods. Luckily, EB was the first mod I've stumbled upon. I never looked back Even now on a machine that can smoothly run nearly any game, I still enjoy EB...

[moonburn]

i think someone should point out this thread to ca to explain them they had the talent and the raw material to make a masterpiece and somehow they lost the chance ...

as for people saying about the sparkles selling i believe that loyalty sells better and loosing the 18++ year old gamers is loosing 2 much of a slice of the market cause a 14 year old kid who buys it and doesn´t like it will probably never buy another ca game again and all the litle kid that buy it will end up growing and will want a greater challange and more indepth gameplay

[bobbin]

RTW was a bought on a whim, had to decide between it and Dawn of War but Rome looked like it had more replay value.

I got into EB back in the 0.7 days through playing RTR. The massive variety of units and the map were the big selling points for me.

[the man with no name]

I got started with RTW when I saw this video on youtube. It just looks so darn Epic! The only bad thing is that the Romans won. However, fellow Romaioktonoi, please do not spam on this thread or it will get locked. After I started playing RTW, I got more interested in ancient history, and then began to hate RTW for being innacurate. One day I was looking up on cataphracts when I saw a picture of an EB cataphract wielding a 2 handed lance. When I looked into EB more, I realized it was a history buff's dream come true.

CLicking on tjhat link led me into an hour of watching videos.

The History Channel used to run some documentaries of ancient battles where the use the RTW engines to recreate parts of those battles. ...this got me interested in RTW: Rome.

After I started playing Rome, I found out about EB through RTW's forums.

I love that series. Didn't ever watch it on the history channel, but i got the whole serries for Xmas.


As for how I got to EB: My brother introduced me to R:TW When I was in 3rd grade. Played it got bored. Then 1&1/2 yrs. later I see my brother playing something like R:TW. I asked what it was and he said something like this "This is Europa Barbarorum, it's a complete conversion mod for R:TW. It's way better and much more historicly accurate. I'll only let you play this mod using My R:TW discs." I remember him playing a custom battle as the Saka against the Sarmatians.

Ever since then i've been hooked.

[team_kramnik]

Searched the Web for a strategy game about ancient warfare. Got to the rtw wiki. Didn't look that good. But under modifications it said the most popular ones are Europa Barbarorum and Rome Total Realism. Looked at the EB website and immediatly went to get the game. My first big RTW battle was in the forests of southern Germania watching approaching legions shouting stuff like "signum verte!". Brillant!

MY SOLDIERS ACT LIKE REAL SOLDIERS FOR ONCE!

Agreed! I always thought getting EB was a good decision but you actually have to play other mods to see how good EB really is. I always get the feeling greek peltast, syran archer, carthie sacred band... they're all made in Taiwan anyway.

[Suomaa]

In 2006 i got Medieval: Total war as birthday present, then i begun to play it, and i got Total war: Eras as Christmas present in same year, and i soon begun to visit at totalwarforums, and heard of mods. When i begun visiting here, too, i got interested in this mod, and when i can soon play RTW in computer that has internet connection, i'll download this.